


Vessel

by IndyDeLarge



Category: King of Fighters
Genre: Character Study, she needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26814505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndyDeLarge/pseuds/IndyDeLarge
Summary: Whip can't sleep.
Kudos: 2





	Vessel

* * *

Sometimes I have nightmares. Images where my naked body floats in a test tube. Examined by faceless men, dressed in neat white coats and moving with hands of slow pulse.

Lately, it has become a habit for me to wake up screaming, which is why Heidern ordered me to share a room with Leona. What a pair we make.

On nights when I don't suffer, she's the one who screams. But we never do it at the same time, as if hours before our spirits agree on who should take the role of caregiver.

Leona knows each one of my recurring nightmares: their introductions, conflicts and endings. What she doesn't know is that the reason of my screams is never the view of strangers abusing my flesh. The reason is that that body, small, thin, and free of scars… is not mine.

When I close my eyes, and my mind wanders away from the palpable reality I find myself in, my identity dresses in new clothes. Tiny dirty clothes, as if my nature was always to walk as God brought me into the world.

God, my parents, or a group of NESTS scientists who are probably dead. That body, materialized in pure water with tubes entering the throat, is Seirah's. The real Seirah.

The same one that cried out while leaving her mother's womb. The baby who the doctor carried in his arms. The girl who took care of K' until the last second, where they snatched him from her small hand to use him as a lab rat. The Seirah that failed, but after all, the first one.

When I look at myself in the mirror I draw lines across my (her?) face. From her forehead to the tip of my nose, from my lips to her chin. I guess I'm trying to find an indentation to a hollow place. Or a soft, delicate spot made of clay where I can poke around until I slowly break apart.

That is what I try to do in my dreams. Decipher if there is something inside me that shows that I am more than a container. But my hands never rise, my feet don't move and my mouth remains shut.

I'm always paralyzed.

And when I see Seirah's body it takes me only a few seconds to make out what lies behind her. There, I see a room without walls, with a ceiling as high as a cathedral. And an endless row of mindless replicated bodies waiting to be activated by a monster's decision.

Sometimes I dream they wake up. They open their eyes and frantically tear the tube out and hit the glass with their fists. Everything shatters in unison. Shards of glass fly in all directions, water spills on the linoleum floor, and desperate high-pitched voices disappear down the hallways.

When this happens I usually wake up. Without screaming.

But when, despite my terror, my vigil does not return, I see them turn towards me. I see them _running_ towards me. I feel them touching me. First in disbelief, then admiration, then frustration, and finally hatred.

They try to pierce my skin with their nails but their limbs are still weak, and they end up breaking under the force. Like their legs, which tremble and give way to gravity.

I see them falling around me like puppets without strings.

Then I wake up.

My screams bounce off the four walls of the room. Leona's hands hold my sweat soaked cheeks trying to pull me out of the frozen lake before I drown.

I scream for them. For the iterations of Seirah.

Do they have a soul? Or are they mannequins?

Do _I_ have a soul?

Will God let me into heaven? Or the Devil into hell?

What will happen to me when I die?

And it is then, while I search for answers in vain, that I think, how could I take her place? Me. A person who couldn't give her traumatized younger brother the memory of his own name.

I have scratched all the walls of my mind in search of it, but the only thing that comes back each time is: K'. A value in honor of a stranger, a bland letter, half a syllable.

K'. As if the boy's life had only begun the moment NESTS decided that it should, baptizing him as a damn joke.

When I see him, I make every effort to perceive what he's hiding behind his gray eyes. Does he think I am an impostor? Does he still cling to me because I'm the last thing left of his past life? Do I do the same? Kula, Maxima, Ralf, Leona, they all come after my rebirth. Everyone but K'.

That white-haired boy is the only proof that confirms that yes, I existed. I existed at some point outside my job as an assassin for a biotech union. That these palms, soaked in so much blood that it would be impossible to clean them, used to embrace without ulterior motives.

Perhaps our fraternity is nothing more than a shaggy thread. It supports our sanity over an endless void. The clone and the failed experiment, swinging forever in the dark holding hands.

I finally calm down, after imitating how Leona inhales and exhales in front of me with concrete eyes. Once she makes sure my pulse is back to normal I see her disappear into the bathroom.

I am aware of the tears running down my cheeks. I like knowing that I can cry, and that realization hurts like a punch to the stomach.

After a few seconds she emerges with a glass of water. I say thanks in a hoarse voice, and I gulp it empty.

When I lift my eyes I see her take the covers off her bed. Without saying a word she goes to the door and opens it slightly. There's a question in her face, to which I nod in confirmation while I get out of bed with lethargic step, jelly legs and spaghetti arms.

I take a blanket from her hand and we make our way through the narrow hallways into the dead of night. I'm thinking about how similar these corridors are to the NESTS barracks I used to walk through. Not with unsteady gait but lively.

I think back to K', how the role he occupies in my life used to be filled by someone else.

I think of the love that I won and the one that I lost. The false brother that I still cry for when the moon is at its highest point and everyone close their eyes.

A masochistic part of me, a part that only lights up when I'm at the darkest bottom of the well, whispers in my ear that the same bone-eating feeling that fills me also invaded Krizalid in his last seconds. The uncertainty in not knowing what will happen when your heart stops beating.

Perhaps there's no eternity for abominations like us. Once my brain finishes producing synaptic connections every hint of what Seirah once was will disappear with me. Life after death will only be possible for the rest. Those who were born from the hand of the Creator and not from man's.

Leona opens the doors and we step into the base training field in silence. A gust of wind blows my hair as I sit with the blanket around me. Tonight there's no moon or stars.

Leona asks if I want a cup of tea, I nod, and I hear the sounds of her steps decrease. Somehow it feels like she's drifting away from me at the speed of light. To the point that if I don't scream now, begging her to come back, I'll be stuck in this position forever: cramped, with nothing to appreciate in the sky, glassy eyed and breathing with a stuffy nose for the rest of my life.

Still I remain silent. I sigh and watch the smoke from my breath escape my mouth to spiral up and disappear into nothingness.

I think of Krizalid. Of his confused face the last time I looked into his eyes. I rub the palms of my hands and convince myself that death was for his good. Divine will, I'd love to say.

Because living looking in the mirror as you see an open wound is...waiting. Waiting for the infection to spread and for the worms to wriggle in the meat. In my case I can pretend that they're not there, but they are: in my sleepless nights, in the irremediable guilt, in the indecipherable eyes of my brother, and in the lost memories that I want to recover even though they don't belong to me.

Certain days I say I would've found that carefree fraternity that I long for in him, Krizalid. I wonder if we would've managed to build a home with each other. If it would've lasted, despite the truth of our origins.

"You had the same dream" I hear Leona at my back. There is no question in her neutral voice, so I don't answer or turn around.

She sits next to me covering herself with her blanket, and hands me a cup of tea. I know I don't need to ask her if it has honey.

"It's not me" I whisper with a small voice. I turn around and Leona looks at me with patient eyes, waiting for me to continue "The… person in the lab, in the cloning tube. It's Seirah."

In the darkness, on her expressionless face, I catch a glimpse of a frown but it soon disappears.

"You're Seirah" she answers, and something in her tone tells me that she understands the meaning behind my words.

In my head millions of other sentences mix, undo, bounce and explode. In an attempt to express the emptiness within me. Perhaps the emptiness that I have instead of a soul.

"I try to believe it, I do" I start "But she always finds a way to come back" I pause to swallow the rock in my throat and I feel pressure in my eyes. I think it's Seirah choking me with her cold hands from beyond the grave "It's as if I have her heart beating inside of me. It's hers, isn't it? I just borrowed it" I take a long sip of my tea until I feel the sting on my tongue and the inside of my cheeks. Leona is silent, but I pray for her to say something. Anything "I don't even know how many times they tried it, how many versions of her existed before I came along, or-"

"Does it matter?" she asks. In confusion I turn my head to take a look at her, trying to discern something in her severe and unwavering expression "I don't care, neither the Colonel or the Lieutenant, nor K' or Kula, do you care?"

Of course I do, I want to say.

I don't.

Leona continues with that flat tone that I have learned to memorize.

"I know I didn't meet that Seirah, but I know you. She wasn't the one who fought against NESTS, the one who took Kula to an amusement park for the first time or the one who brought me vegetable soup when I was in the hospital" Faced with the memories played without my consent I look away for a few seconds. But she tugs the side of my blanket to get my attention. I turn around without knowing what to expect "It was you."

"Maybe" It's the only thing I can say.

I take a deep breath through my nose, and exhale with the same force. The lump in my throat dissolves slightly as my fingers play with the rough fabric of the cotton blanket. Leona speaks again, listless but in some determined way.

"You could be the first clone, or the one thousand and still… nothing would make us change our mind."

I just nod with a blank stare and, both knowing when we use too many words, we choose to let the sound of the night envelop us.

I take a sip of my tea feeling the hot liquid slide down my tense throat and I sigh when I finish swallowing. I see the smoke of my breath again, in contrast with the black sky.

Eastern culture believes it materializes the soul.

So I sigh again and reach out to try to catch it, put it in a jar like a key under the rug, but it slips through my numb fingers.

Then I think, what difference does it make, as long as I get to see it?


End file.
